“Here’s another order of the President’s,” continued the Secretary, addressing the officer. “He wants you to take this man down to Meade. I don’t know anything about the case. It ought to have gone through this department. I suppose I’ll have to back it.” He sat down at the table, endorsed the letter on the back, and handed it to the officer, who took it and read it carefully. “Why is it,” continued Stanton, still voicing his irritability, “that the President always chooses you to send on these irregular errands?” “I don’t know, Mr. Secretary,” replied the lieutenant, “except that Mr. Lincoln and I trust each other.” The great War Secretary looked at the officer for a moment, with a quizzical expression in his eyes, then, without another word, he turned to his desk and took up again the herculean task which as a patriot, as an enthusiast, as a lover though a critic of Lincoln, he cheerfully and splendidly performed. So Bannister, accompanied by his guard, went out, along the street, across the Potomac, and down through war-ravaged Virginia, toward the camping hosts of Meade, toward the son who, with a foresight clearer than his own, had preceded him to war. And as he went a new fire of patriotism burned in his heart, a new light of comprehension illumined his mind, and to his list of the world’s great heroes was added a new great name. CHAPTER X FIGHTING FOR THE FLAG For three days, Robert Barnwell Bannister had been a soldier of the United States. On the evening of the third day he sat at the opening of his tent studying a small volume of infantry tactics which had fallen into his hands. Inside the tent his comrade and tent-mate, a young fellow hardly older and no less patriotic and enthusiastic than himself, just in from two hours of picket-duty, lay resting on a rude board couch, with a block of wood and a coat for a pillow, singing softly to himself a rude bit of doggerel that had recently become popular in camp. “Mud in the coffee and niggers in the pork, Lobskous salad to be eaten with a fork, Hardtack buns--oh, but soldiering is fun; Never mind the grub, boys, we’ll make the Johnnies run.” After a moment he called out:-- “Say, Bob, here’s a conundrum. What’s the difference between a bounty-jumper and a--” “Oh, button up!” replied Bob, who was studying out a peculiarly difficult infantry formation, and did not wish to be interrupted. “All right! now you’ll never know,” responded his comrade. For a few moments there was silence, then the voice in the tent was again heard singing rude rhymes of war. “We are goin’ to drop our thunder, Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb; You had better stand from under, Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb; You will see the lightnin’ flash, You will hear the muskets crash, It will be the Yankees comin’, Johnny Reb, Johnny Reb; And we’ll git you while you’re runnin’, Johnny Reb.”